Nigerian Migrants in the Camerooms and the Reactions of the Host Communities, 1885 - 1961
Adebayo A. Lawal, Department of History and Strategic Studies, University of Lagos
panlawi2001@yahoo.com
This is an attempt to identify the motives
for and patterns and types of the migrations of Nigerians to the Cameroons
from 1885 to 1961. The paper focuses on the Igbo, Efik-Ibibio, Ijo,
Tiv, Yoruba and Edo ethnic groups who embarked an primary, secondary,
and oscillatory migrations in response to changing circumstances and
opportunities. The groups from various dispersal points and used different
routes and settled in various Cameroonian towns, notwithstanding the
strict cross-border controls by the British and Germans between 1885
and 1914 and by the British and the French between 1919 and 1961.
The mandate system compelled the political integration of the British
Cameroon with Nigeria and triggered more frequent migrations of Nigerians
to fill many colonial vacancies, and implement the indirect rule. The
Trusteeship system also reinforced political, administrative, economic
and financial integration with the concomitant introduction of modern
transport and communication system, manpower training, and the Cameroons
Development Corporation. According to the 1951 census the Igbo constituted
the largest proportion of Nigerians who dominated commerce and were
more visible in the colonial service and palm oil plantation. All the
Nigerian ethnic groups inter-married with the Cameroonians and vice
versa and shared similar Islamic and Christian beliefs. However the
politics of the 1950s in Eastern Region by which politicians in the
British Cameroons were marginalized in the regional election, aroused
anti-Igbo sentiment in the Cameroons. A remote cause of the hostility
were their commercial malpractices which were hinged on the concepts
of “price and buy” and “conditional sales”.
Apart from condemning Igbo commercial domination, the Cameroonians
called for Igbo deportation, Indeed Igbo lives and property were under
threat. Calm was only restored by the prompt intervention of the colonial
government. With available evidence the paper tries to test the models
of Mabogunje (1970), Byerlee (1974) and Todaro (1969) that typify migrations
in West Africa. The choice of these models will be justified.
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